Heretofore metatarsal guards have been made for shoes but they have mainly been disposed outside of the vamp and tongue. This made for an awkward construction for the wearer and one that was heavy looking. Efforts have been made to provide an enclosed metatarsal guard, particularly in the form of articulated metal sections riveted together so as to provide flexibility to make the shoe easier to put on the foot. These guards are relatively inefficient as they do not adequately distribute the forces of falling objects and are also subject to breaking of the rivets that hold the articulated sections together. Other enclosed guards have been of the very limited area and so incapable of distributing any force to prevent its being concentrated upon a particular part of the foot.
The objects of the present invention are to overcome all of the foregoing deficiencies and to provide a neat looking shoe that affords maximum protection to the wearer against forces applied to the metatarsal area. It is an object to provide such a guard that upon receiving such forces will tend to spread and to distribute and dissipate those forces through thick shock-absorbing padding over a substantial area of the foot and through the steel toe to some extent to prevent their being applied to the foot at all. Also it is an object to provide such a shoe with resilient undersoling so that if the forces are applied to the foot, they are further absorbed by such undersoling.
The invention will be illustrated in connection with a shoe formed with goodyear welt construction. It will be understood that it can be used with other types of safety foot coverings such as boots or shoes made with other types of shoe constructions and patterns.